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Even Apple Loyalists Taking Their Time On Apple Watch

NEW YORK: For all those who hailed the iPhone in 2007, the AppleWatch’s arrival has hardly been the second coming.

Sure, it can do many useful, even delightful things, such as showing incoming texts and email, tracking heart rates during exercise. But is that enough to spend $350 or more, especially when it requires wearing a watch while still carrying an iPhone around?

Early Apple Watch owners seem generally happy with it, but Apple’s bigger worry should be those on the sidelines – even hardcore Apple fans, not to mention everybody else – who are waiting to take the plunge.

The wait-and-see attitude is not exactly helping investor sentiment. Apple hasn’t released Apple Watch sales figures, but the company’s most recent quarterly financial report suggests that they were lower than many Wall Street analysts expected, though Apple said they exceeded internal projections.

Among people holding off on the watch, some say they are waiting for early kinks to be worked out and others, for an “aha moment.”

David Lubarsky, a Fairfield, Conn., photographer, loves his watch because he can get “basic information, quick” and avoid staring at Facebook on the phone all day. It lets him see texts, emails, calendar appointments and baseball scores.

But he gets frustrated when using it to pay for coffee at Starbucks.

“Your wrist doesn’t necessarily twist to the right position to the scanner so it’s pretty awkward,” he said.